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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22565911">Take these sunken eyes and learn to see</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/viveriveniversumvivusvici55/pseuds/viveriveniversumvivusvici55'>viveriveniversumvivusvici55</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Dormouse [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Formerly Tranquil Inquisitor (Dragon Age), Gen, Mage-Templar Dynamics (Dragon Age), Non-Canon Inquisitor (Dragon Age), post-What Pride Hath Wrought</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 10:21:16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,292</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22565911</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/viveriveniversumvivusvici55/pseuds/viveriveniversumvivusvici55</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In which two enemies, two victims of the Chantry, have a chat.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Dormouse [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1545286</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Take these sunken eyes and learn to see</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I desperately love this idea. Clarice was scared shitless of the Templars and refused to even engage with them. What happened to them haunts her.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It's cold and dark in the cells below Skyhold. Samson sits in the corner of the cell, awaiting judgement, a scowl on his face. The guards aren't happy with him either, giving him a wide berth but keeping an eagle eye on him. Of course they were - the precious Inquisition didn't want to lose him, even though he'd already lost everything. Cullen had come down to see him once, furious, and didn't stay long, barely able to stand the sight of him. Not that Samson blamed him - he was everything that the commander despised, after all.</p><p>Now, he just had to wait and see what the Inquisitor wanted of him. She'd kept him alive and made sure he was dragged back to the Inquisition in decent care, but she hadn't said a word to him other than brief words to make sure he was alright. Saving her best words for the trial, he suspected. He sits alone in the shadows, his veins throbbing with a need for lyrium. He has been given small amounts, enough to keep the worst cravings at bay, but it's not enough. Not compared to being surrounded by red lyrium. His head pounds, he is sweating, he can't sleep, he hurts so much...</p><p>“Let me see him.”</p><p>Samson knows that voice. That is the voice that called to him across Mythal’s temple, the voice that shouted at his master in Haven, and, if he imagines the monotone, a voice from Kirkwall Circle.</p><p>He rises from the corner of his cell, making his way to the bars, and awaited the small footsteps that made their way down the cobblestones towards his cell. Bloodshot eyes peer out in the faint torchlight until he sees her come in and he smiles at her through the cell bars, projecting confidence and menace for just a moment, even if he holds not an ounce of power here.</p><p>“Hello, Clarice.”</p><p>She stands before him in formal wear, a blue shirt and pants. Her expression is neutral and blank, her sharp eyes on him, razing him with the sharpness. There had always been intelligence in her eyes, behind the Tranquility, but now she looked <em>alive. </em>It was startling to see.</p><p>"Hello, Raleigh."</p><p>She looks whole, if a little fragile, and for yet another moment, he wonders how much power was within the anchor if it means it could do that for her. Imagine what it could’ve done for his master if the process had gone right. He feels anger fill him at the sight of her, already judging him.</p><p>“You here to gloat?” He snarls at her.</p><p>“I don’t really remember how,” she tells him, voice blank apart from a slightly arched eyebrow and a sheepish smile, “they don’t teach that in ‘recovering from Tranquility school’.”</p><p>“But they do teach you sarcasm.”</p><p>“No, that comes from my friends.” She is steady and stern, but there's vulnerability in the context of those words (<em>I have friends now, I had to relearn how to be a person after what they did to me)</em> and he feels himself sag. He can’t be angry at her. Even if they shoved her into a high role, she’s still another victim of the Chantry. Used, reshaped, used some more, and when Fate tore her asunder, found her a new role.</p><p>He sags against the bars, head down to stare at her. “How could you let them guide you? After what they did to us?” </p><p>(<em>Cullen told him, late one night, about his friend from Ferelden, scared to go to the Circle, and when he’d been assigned to her Circle, she’d been made Tranquil by mistake. He was sad, upset, and couldn’t reconcile it with his rage against mages. "She was a good person, Samson. Smart, sweet, remembers everything she's ever read. And they did that to her because she thought she was a blood mage. And the real one </em><strong><em>got</em></strong><em> away.</em> <em>Magic is dangerous...but she wasn't. She isn't."</em></p><p>
  <em> She’d come to Kirkwall a week before Samson was kicked out. All he could see in her was the Chantry’s failure, the loss of a bright and beautiful woman to the Order's ineptitude and desperate need for a scapegoat.<br/>
</em>
</p><p>
  <em> When he saw her at the Temple of Mythal, armour clad and staff in hand, he saw someone else reforged by Corypheus's work. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Perhaps they weren't so different after all.) </em>
</p><p>She turns her hand over, the mark glowing. “Take a guess what I was like after I got this.”</p><p>He can guess. No magic, no recent practice...what spy reports he'd heard, the few spies that had made their way in, said that she had come undone. Nearly went insane with the rush of magic and memory. She should have, a dark part of him thinks. Would have served the Chantry right to lose their savour.</p><p>“The Chantry unmade and remade me."</p><p>"<em>Corypheus </em>remade you," he spits.</p><p>She glares at him. "No. I do not call what happened to me being remade. I call that trying to kill me, failing, and fucking me up in the process." Her voice is matter of fact, but there is still vitriol in there. "The <em>Chantry</em> was there. They brought in the mage that pieced me back together, who guided me through my Harrowing, the soldiers who guarded me, the purpose that kept me alive every minute I wanted to die.</p><p>"Corypheus gave you back the power the Chantry stole from you."</p><p>Clarice's voice goes harsher and she strides up to him. "Look me in the eye and tell me that Corypheus saw worth in me and remade me only to be his greatest enemy. Tell me that the nightmare I went through was him trying to give me back what the Chantry stripped."</p><p>He can't. She scoffs at him. "Regardless of their intent, the Chantry gave me more power than I ever had. The kind that can change them in return. I can make them better like this.” She sounds so true, so steady that he can’t help but believe her. “You know as much as I do that they won’t listen to mages locked in a Circle or a washed up Templar on a streetcorner.”</p><p>“But they do an Inquisitor and a General.” He knows that well. It’s why he took up Corypheus’s offer.</p><p>She nods. "Feeding hope instead of despair."</p><p>Samson nods. "I did the same."</p><p>“I failed the Templars. I know I did.” There is sorrow in her face, if he squints. “I was afraid and I didn’t approach them.”</p><p>As much as he wants to spit at her, curse her for abandoning them, he understands. She of all people has a right to be afraid of Templars. Enough of his humanity survived to know that. “You saved the mages and you didn’t make them slaves to your cause. Corypheus hated you for it.”</p><p>She smirks a little. “I think he hates me for a lot of reasons, Samson.”</p><p>He laughs a little, wheezing with the sound, and leans against the bars in pain. Her expression turns to concern and he waves her off. “I don’t want your pity.”</p><p>“It’s not pity.” Samson glares at her and she raises her eyebrows. “It’s not. I want you alive for trial, Samson, for what I hope will come of you. But I don’t want you to suffer, as furious as I am with what you did. So take what I offer, you dumbass, it does nothing.”</p><p>Her hand sparkles with magic and a few sparks that come off it hit him. Some of the pain eases and he sighs. <em> What the hell. </em> “My chest. I can’t breathe well anymore.” <em>And so much more, but you don't know that.</em></p><p>She reaches through the bars to press her hand against his chest. The other hand, the one with the anchor Anchor, glows with a different kind of magic, and her eyes stay locked on his. He knows what that means. <em>I am helping you. You take advantage and try to fuck with me, I will </em><b><em>fuck you up.</em></b> So he doesn’t. He stays still and lets her magic work, feeling the sparks of it move through his veins. The pain, bit by bit, starts to ease and he sags against the bars. Each breath comes better, bit by bit, and the tightness under his skin is replaced by warmth. It doesn’t feel like the first shot of lyrium, where his veins were on fire with power. This feels…comforting. Like a warm blanket, like arms around him, like warm soup on a cold day. He sighs with relief, resting his forehead against his arm, and slowly the magic fills his whole body. His headache fades, the strain behind his eyes disappears, the fevered chills stop, and he feels a little more rested, like he could get a full night's sleep. It doesn’t feel like the red lyrium.</p><p>It feels like the life he lost by joining the Chantry.</p><p>Slowly, her hand pulls away and the warmth lingers in him, even with the magic stopped. Her posture isn’t as straight, her hand shaking a little, but she still stands as tall as she can. The mana spent on him must have been incredible, but there isn’t an ounce of regret in her face.</p><p>“Thank you,” he says quietly. “You shouldn’t waste your efforts on me.”</p><p>“It’s not a waste. Besides, I do have something I want from you, if you’re amenable to give it me.”</p><p>He gestures around him. “I’ve nothing better to do, but nowhere to go. What do you want, oh, Inquisitor?”</p><p>She is quiet. “I know Corypheus had other plans. But if you had it - what would you want the Templars to be?”</p><p>He doesn’t reel back from the bars, too wrapped up in the effect of the healing magic to move, but his expression curdles. “You can’t ask me that.”</p><p>“I can. I did.” She lifts her chin. “You were a Templar. I’d ask Cullen, but he still loves the Chantry, even if he left the Order. You saw what was wrong in them, and I can still barely look a Templar in the eye. Tell me.”</p><p>In this moment, he realizes that he could still accomplish something for Corypheus. Samson is no longer the Vessel for the Well of Sorrows, and he’s been tossed aside as a result. But he could whisper words in her ear, turn the world to Corypheus’s will. But she is smart and she’ll hear it. And he knows, despite his cynicism, that she’ll try. </p><p>(<em> The mages are allies, the remaining Templars were rescued and brought in. She does not claim to be Andraste’s Herald, she gives power to the elves, she takes away the Chantry’s authority. She might actually </em> <b> <em>succeed.</em> </b> <em> ) </em></p><p>“I want the Order gone, turned to dust, and every Templar set free. Get them off the lyrium,” he says firmly. “They turned us into slaves with it.”</p><p>“Bound to the Order, mind and soul, someone always holding the lyrium leash,” she says, steady as if she’s repeating someone.</p><p>“And who said that?”</p><p>Her eyes flash. “Seeker Pentaghast, surprisingly.”</p><p>He snarls. “She supported what they did to us.”</p><p>“She supports stepping away from it now,” she explains, “but we are not talking about my companions. I agree, the Templars have suffered. The lyrium turns them into addicts that slowly fall apart in their old age, if they get to that point. Their role changed, and it created a world where cruelty could thrive and was, in fact, supported. It changed them, made them see people as less than. The Order, as it is, cannot thrive. It hurts everyone.”</p><p>“So what do you plan to do, Clarice?” He asks, voice sharp. “Make everyone friends again?”</p><p>“I plan to find a way for Templars to serve without that leash. To help the ones that have suffered, to help them find a purpose that doesn’t destroy them from within,” she says. “It’ll be hard, but I will make sure it happens.”</p><p>He barks a laugh. “Forgive me if I don’t believe you.”</p><p>“Are you that cynical?”</p><p><em> Oh, yes, I am. </em>“You say you have the power to change the world, but you can’t heal everyone.”</p><p>Her expression changes to determination and she straightens. He sees it now – he sees why people follow her, hang on her every word. He sees the friend maker, the woman who stormed the Fade and the Winter Palace, the woman who pieced herself back together into an intact human being and refused to let anyone else feel the pain that she did. It makes him want to spit at her for even thinking that she could stand against Corypheus, but it also makes him want to bow.</p><p>He understands why, perhaps in the last human part of Corypheus...the god should be afraid of her.</p><p>“Watch me, Raleigh.”</p><p>He tips his head slightly to the side. "Dramatic, but that won't earn you any success unless you back it up with success."</p><p>She barks out a laugh. "Thank you for keeping me honest, then. I have work to do."</p><p>Her head tilts in a bow and she makes her way out at a brisk pace. The warmth of her healing magic lingers in his chest and he resigns himself to sitting alone in this cell until his trial. All the while, her words and determination echo in his head.</p><p>
  <em> Just watch me. </em>
</p><p>Later, as he stands before her - seated in her throne, powerful but also welcoming, offering him another chance to serve and make the world better - he thinks she might just have what it takes to back up her words.</p><p>After all, who better to right the wrongs of the world than a victim of it?</p>
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